Small Claims Court

[Jasmine Vida]

Hey there, has anyone been through the process for small claims court with a contractor in a different county? I currently live in Jacksonville, but I hired a contractor to do work on a rental in Pensacola. He immediately cashed the check for "materials" but delayed my job 6 weeks until we finally fired him. He never started the work, and when I asked for the deposit back he said he "didn't have the money because he bought materials" and over the course of 9 weeks has only paid me back half of my deposit, but he said he will not pay us back the rest. I know you can file a claim in any county, but would he have to come to our county for court or would we have to go there? We gave him the check physically in Pensacola, but I mean it would've been the same thing as mailing a check, like I said since no work was performed. 

[Caleb Drake]

Who was the GC? I can give you some advice on how to publicly blast the guy. There are a lot of forums and FB pages that contractors use in Pensacola to market... you can work on getting his name out there and maybe he will pay up. I recently had a dude do something similar. I'm in the process of getting a lawyer in Pensacola to handle it.

From what I know of this (I live in the adjacent county, Santa Rosa County) the claim has to be filed in the county in which the claim happened. I confirmed that with my lawyer friend today for you. He also said that it's limited to $8k.